The Shaman was amazed; his look of hatred melted away, but his eyes remained wary. Kurelen nodded. “Strange doctrines breed strange feuds. Thou art enough for our people.”
Kokchu smiled darkly, but he was still wary. “Thou art wise, Kurelen. But not all men are so wise.”
“I think,” said Kurelen, “that they ought to be joined to the next caravan, and sent on their way. Especially the monk. I am convinced of his holiness, and perhaps the spirits might be annoyed if he is murdered. But the priest does not impress me as being under the guardianship of any important god—Besides, the winter is coming, and we must move on, and each extra mouth is an extra burden.”
Kokchu nodded, smiling evilly. He wet his lips.
Kurelen enlarged on the subject. “The Year of the Swine is not considered a very propitious one for the Yakka Mongols. Perhaps the spirits need placating—a worthy sacrifice. Eh, Kokchu?”
The Shaman replied gravely, but his eyes gleamed: “I am certain thou dost speak truth, Kurelen.”
Yesukai had been listening with truculent bewilderment. He said ironically: “The heavens will surely fall, observing you both in agreement.”
Kurelen regarded him with immense gravity: “Wise men may disagree on matters of no importance, but on serious things they are of one thought.” He poked the Shaman in the belly, and the holy man winced. “Eh, Kokchu?”
The Shaman rubbed the sore spot, shot a fiery look at Kurelen, but answered at once: “Again, thou dost speak truth.”
The herdsman returned with Jelmi and Seljuken. The latter was reeling, but the monk walked with serene dignity and quietness. The Shaman examined both men closely. Finally his eye lingered on Jelmi, whom he hated upon sight. And then, very slowly, his eye travelled to Kurelen and back to Jelmi, and the most evil smile lit up his sallow features.
Yesukai wanted the goodwill and the friendship of all gods on this occasion, so he greeted the captives heartily, and assigned them to the warmest places near the fire. The choicest morsels were urged on them, and brimming cups. Jelmi smiled courteously, tried to eat and drink. Seljuken gorged, became boastful. The warriors, amused, kept egging him on to fresh extravagances, and roaring with laughter, poking him with their fists, and refilled his cup. Kurelen squatted near by, grinning, his chin on his knees. The old men twanged their fiddles, the fires glowed brighter, some of the warriors, completely drunken, did an uncouth dance. Against the background of the black night the savage faces were splashed with vivid orange fire, and the crowding eyes were the glittering eyes of savagery. Hoarse voices and cries mingled with the wind, bodies swayed with the songs and the fiddles. Warriors smote the hilts of daggers upon their shields, so that the ice-cold air vibrated like drums. The laughter was like the bellowing of wild beasts.
And like beasts, too, were the warriors, with their huge shaggy coats of marten and fox and bear, the furred hats high over wrinkling foreheads, the bared teeth with their wolf-like glisten. Brothers to the mountain lion and the bear of the ravines, the eagles of the white peaks. Simple and ferocious, mercy to them was an unheard word, and gentleness a sound in an unknown tongue. Kurelen was of their flesh and their land and desert, yet he felt to them as alien as a denizen of that languid and golden civilization behind the Great Wall. He felt corrupt and old, smiling and decadent, lazy and amused, subtle and impotent. He found a place beside Jelmi, and instinctively the two drew together, as men who find themselves in danger. Both constantly shivered, for each moment the air grew more like rarefied ice, and that part of them not turned to the fire slowly became numb, in spite of padded garments of felt and fur. In that air sounds came clear and sharp and imminent, and the cough or laugh at a distant fire intruded into the laughter and shouts of a nearer fire.
Some one remembered that Kurelen had a beautiful voice, and Yesukai commanded him to sing. By this time he was quite drunk. He struggled to his feet, and the firelight fell full on him. His hood had fallen back on his broad and twisted shoulders; his dark face had a gleam and flash on it as from some unseen lightning. The red firelight lay in the folds of his stiff felt coat, and his eye-sockets were full of the lurid redness. He looked at the warriors, and they looked back at him, and their foreheads wrinkled; they muttered to themselves. From other fires hurried other men, hearing that Kurelen was to sing, and three old men, grinning, began to twang their fiddles tentatively. Kurelen flung out his arms with a smile that was at once ribald and sinister, and he laughed. No one laughed with him. The priest, Seljuken, had collapsed in a drunken sleep.
Kurelen bowed to Jelmi, who was gazing at him earnestly and with sadness. “I shall sing one of thy father’s songs, translating it roughly for these rude ears,” he said. “They will not understand. We shall be amused, thou and I.”
“I understand some of thy people’s tongue,” responded Jelmi in his soft voice. “I have worked among them before this.” An eagerness had come into his face, and he waited.
Houlun, lying exhaustedly on her bed, heard, through the clear and icy air, her brother’s voice. She sat up. She pulled a fur robe over her shoulders, and painfully made her way to the door of the yurt. There she sat, listening, all her heart fixed on the sound, hearing nothing else. She heard each word, but she listened mostly to his voice, so strong and sweet and full, and round with laughter, accompanied by the weird high strumming of the fiddles.
“By misery and human want betrayed,
Bright Inspiration plays the wench to fear,
And Courage on her ardent lips has laid
Her own cold hands. No Art draws near
When Wisdom for a bone applauds the clown.
Before the Belly even gods go down.
“It would be sweet, if any truths remain,
That man, tormented, can recall his soul,
That tasteless porridge never can sustain
Unless ’tis offered in a polished bowl.
But this be truth, however fools may frown:
Before the Belly even gods go down.”
His voice fell into silence, and left a throbbing in the night behind it, like the vibration of a struck note. But no one applauded; the warriors, puzzled, stared at each other. They were disappointed. They had not understood a single word. Only Jelmi had understood, and the Shaman with his subtle face. Jelmi had been entranced by the singer’s voice. Truly, he thought, it is the voice of the Lord Buddha, Himself. It seemed to him that the immense emptiness of the Gobi night had magnified that voice until it had reached the stars, who had stood still in amazement. It seemed to him that the black ramparts of the hills had been filled with an answering choral of angels. The Shaman smiled. His expression was no longer hostile, and he regarded Kurelen as a man might regard another man in the company of soulless animals. Curled before the fire, the priest snored.
Then the Shaman clapped his hands. It was the only applause. The warriors licked their lips, and scowled. “Hast thou no songs of valor, Kurelen?” one of them shouted, contemptuously.
“Valor?” repeated Kurelen, meditatively, as though he had never heard the word before.
Yesukai spit, to show his disdain.
“Doubtless a meaningless word to thee,” he suggested, amid laughter.
“Valor,” said Kurelen, “is the fool’s answer to wisdom.”
And again only Jelmi and the Shaman understood, and the Shaman laughed with subtle delight.
“Sing us a song, then, of love,” said another warrior. The others bellowed with jeering laughter, and struck each other on the chest and shoulders, and rolled before the fire. Kurelen and love! The combination was too delicious for their simple souls. They laughed until their ribs protested, and then their mirth exuded from their grinning lips in animal grunts.
But Kurelen waited, smiling, for their attention. On his lips and his forehead appeared drops of shining sweat.
“Yes,” he said gently, “I shall sing you a song of love.”
Again they laughed. The old man twiddled the strings, and a sweet fair sound f
luttered out into the night. Kurelen began to sing. His voice was fierce and mournful, full of despair and wild hopelessness. The grins on the faces of the warriors faded, leaving them with expressions of wonder and enchantment; they leaned towards the singer, as though loath to miss the faintest inflection in that strong and marvellous voice, so pure and passionate:
“Who may sing of my heart’s beloved?
A thousand men in a thousand songs,
The winds of night and the winds of the morning,
The long blue heron in the lake of silver,
The desert’s voice on the scarlet mountains,
The jade-green forest in the arms of the tempest,
The herdsman’s pipes and the drums of a king.
’Tis only I, ’tis only I, who dare not sing!”
His voice, so beautiful, so strong, yet so unbearably sweet, rose like a wild bird from an abyss of dark chaos and torment, its wings lighted, and its heart visibly beating. All the universe seemed to be listening; one could imagine that the outer borders of space were transfixed with wonder and poignant sadness, and that even the turreted mountains wept in unendurable delight and sorrow. The eyes and the mouths of the warriors stood open, and the shadowy shapes standing beyond the light of the fires were entranced. Even the dogs were silent, and the herded cattle and camels. A strange expression moved over the people’s faces, so that their beasthood was lost, and they were men in their emotion.
The strange unseen lightning glimmered unceasingly on Kurelen’s face as he sang; his eyes were upraised, and filled with an unearthly dazzle, so that the pupils were lost. He smiled, but it was a smile of torture. His hands lifted and moved, the gestures of a dying but convulsed body. No one saw his deformity; he had acquired splendor, so that he towered like a god, standing in the red firelight
“Who may gaze on my heart’s beloved?
The fox and the marten, the bear and the snake,
The caliphs of Baghdad, the Prince of Cathay,
The rat in his hole, and the god in the skies,
The red-eyed camel, the red-beaked vulture,
The priest in the temple, the rag-covered beggar!
’Tis only I, ’tis only I, who dare not gaze!”
Tears fell over the bearded cheeks of the warriors, and lingered a moment in the corners of their savage lips. The Shaman drew back from the firelight; he was seen to wipe his eyes on his sleeve. Jelmi listened to the rude translation of his father’s song. He knew that the translation lost by conversion; it was not the words that so moved the people. It was Kurelen’s voice that struck men’s hearts with sounds too lovely, too sweet, too tragic for endurance. That voice expressed all the sorrow of all men, all their inarticulate yearning, their fumbling hands in the universal darkness, which was lighted only feebly by the dim candle of their souls, and inhabited only by their unsleeping terror. Here was man’s cry against the gods, against his own torment, against his lostness and his eternal loneliness.
Drawn by her brother’s voice, Houlun crept weakly from her yurt, wrapped in her dragging furs. She stayed far from any fire, but she could hear him clearly. She saw his face, haloed in the red light. It was turned towards her, as though he knew she was there. And it seemed to her that only she and he stood in that desert vastness and silence and night.
“Who may dream of my heart’s beloved?
The lowliest shepherd, the khan of all men.
’Tis only I, ’tis only I, who dare not dream!
Blind must mine eyes be, and frozen my tongue,
Dark are my dreams, as empty as silence,
And lonely my bed, and cold as the shut grave.
’Tis only I, ’tis only I, who dare not dream!”
On the last word Kurelen’s voice broke on a cry. His arms dropped; his head dropped on his concave chest. He stood, unhearing, while a storm of riotous shouts and applause exploded about him. Yesukai was beside himself with admiration and excitement. He ordered that one of the captive women be brought out. The applause still roared about Kurelen when the girl was conducted to the fire. She was a small, plump, pretty thing, and very frightened, and her eyes were big and black as plums, and her mouth tiny and puckered, like a red berry. Yesukai, with a loud laugh, thrust her into Kurelen’s lax arms, and shouted: “Here, take her! I had intended her for myself, but she is thine. Take her to thy tent, and let her comfort thee.”
But Kurelen made no effort to retain the girl in his arms. Yesukai ordered her to go to Kurelen’s yurt, and a herdsman went with her to show her the way. Yesukai shook his wife’s brother jocosely by the arm.
“Go to, Kurelen! She was a fat morsel, and thou didst not look at her. But thou art always shivering, and she will keep thee warm, at least.”
The warriors shouted in a friendly fashion. Kurelen looked about him, bemused. He smiled faintly. “Give me more wine,” he said.
Half a dozen cups were held up for him. He drank from them all, and the warriors’ new admiration for him mounted prodigiously. Room was made for him, but he went back to his seat beside Jelmi. He hugged his legs, his long chin on his knees. His smile was wider and more grotesque than ever; he kept up a constant shivering, and his teeth chattered, for all his nearness to the fire. He trembled with a convulsive inner mirth, but his eyes were turned inward.
Houlun sat on her bed. Her child had been brought back to her, and lay on her knees, wailing. But she appeared not to hear him. Her eyes, enormous and full of tragedy, stared out into the darkness.
In the meantime, the revelry continued.
Chapter 6
It was in the darkest hour just before morning when the Shaman began his great prophecies about the young child, Temujin. One mighty central fire had been piled high with dried animal-droppings and gnarled wood of the desert pines. Around this fire gathered all the people, to listen to the prophecies, and to see the strange things which the Shaman would conjure into their vision. Kokchu was reputed to be a remarkable wizard, but so far few had witnessed his marvels, and there had even been some scepticism about him. Now that the dark dawn was approaching, the rumor had spread that Kokchu would conjure mightily, and every one from all the other fires came, so that one by one the deserted fires flickered slowly out, like red stars, and there was just this fire.
Kurelen had drunk more deeply than ever before in his life, but he could not retain his drunkenness. Finally, the more rice wine he drank the more his mind cleared, until he was afflicted by a sharp clarity of perception which rapidly became agony. Sound impinged on him physically, as though he had been flayed, and hot irons applied to raw nerves and bleeding tendons. Sight became unendurable. He dropped his forehead to his knees and closed his eyes. But he had no desire to rise and go away. Inertia had him in numb chains, and besides, he was very cold, colder than he had ever been before. He did not know that the monk, Jelmi, had removed his own felt coat, and had thrown it over his shoulders. The priest, Seljuken, had begun to stir in his sodden drunken sleep, and was now sitting upright, blinking, rubbing his beard and his eyes, beginning to eat again.
Now a deep silence fell about the smoldering and leaping fire. Kokchu, the Chief Shaman, had arisen. He was standing in the crimson circle of light, and had fixed his eyes on the lightless heavens. His father had been a great Mongol chieftain, of noble family and passionate pride; Kokchu, himself, was a handsome, and even magnificent, man. He was very tall and thin, and had burning black eyes, large and compelling and ferocious. His face was long and brown, his nose beaklike, with flaring nostrils, which gave him a savage look. His large mouth, heavy and drooping, was possessed of a cruel, stubborn and melancholy expression, the mouth of the barbarian. His thick black eyebrows sprang from the inner corner of his eyes upward, like wings, so that his whole face took on a wild ferocity at once intimidating and beautiful. Yet, for all this, he had a subtle and crafty look, as though decadence had come on him before his savagery had been dissolved. On his head he wore a high pointed hood, very narrow and stiff; the scarflike ends fram
ed his face and lay on his shoulders, as did the two thick braids of his black hair. His body, to the waist, was clad in a short coat of creamy woolen, elaborately embroidered in blue and red and yellow in esoteric symbols; the sleeves were long and full, and he kept his hands folded in them. From the waist down he wore a voluminous skirt of blue wool, the folds heavy and dragging. They hid his felt boots, which some enamored woman had richly embroidered. When he removed his hands from his sleeves, his thin dark wrists jangled with gold bangles set with turquoises.
Kurelen opened his eyes and studied the Shaman with interest. He smiled. There, he thought, with admiration, is I, under more fortunate circumstances. At times he enjoyed conversing with Kokchu, who had a mind like glittering jet, and no compunctions whatsoever. Had Kurelen not laughed at the spirits (in which Kokchu had absolutely no belief), the two would have been the most genial of friends. But when Kurelen laughed, the Shaman felt himself endangered. Nevertheless, at intervals, they enjoyed each other, for all their instinctive hatred. For, as Kurelen said, they were the only two men of sense in Yesukai’s ordu. Kurelen said openly, to the Shaman, that he had no objection if Kokchu made swines of men with his conjurings. But he reserved to himself, he announced, the right to laugh both at the Shaman and his believers. The laughter was the eternal sword of enmity between them.
Tonight, Kokchu determined that he would silence Kurelen’s laughter forever, if not with his conjurings, then with another method. He felt very gloomy, for Kurelen, watching him in the firelight, had begun to smile and look interested.
Kokchu placed the palms of his hands piously together, and regarded the sky solemnly. His lips moved; his expression became one of intense awe. All the watchers fell into awe, also, except Kurelen and Jelmi. Eyes were raised so high that the foreheads over them wrinkled like crushed parchment, and fur hats fell far back on skulls. Between parted lips, teeth glistened like the teeth of beasts of prey.
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